A New Kind of Church

Baptism and Stewardship

2007-05-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

Baptism is the key identity marker of Christianity. It is the act that initiates us into the Christian community. It is a rite of passage. The waters of Baptism are one of new identity and new vocation-- they are meant to reconstitute who we are and what we are doing in the world.

Stewardship is an aspect of baptism. This connection may have not been made before (hopefully it has); however, I am asserting it now. The reason is that stewardship is chiefly about identity and vocation-- who am I (who are we) and what am I doing (what are we doing)? Even the classic (and narrow) idea of stewardship as time, treasure, and talent is about these two ideas (vocation and identity)-- how am I as a Christian (as a member of Christ's body) going to use my time, use my treasures, and use my talents for the work of the kingdom?

I have been working with our stewardship team at UPC over the past year. It has been incredible to be included in their journey. They are a very creative and imaginative group of people (yes these are the "finance" people! It's hard to believe). Over the past few years, they have helped our congregation rethink the idea of stewardship-- expanding it far beyond budgets and fund-raising.

They have any expanded it beyond time, talent, and treasure (the now classic Christian definition). Over the past year, our team has articulated two very important ideas regarding stewardship:

1) We must steward our relationships. This can be interpersonal relationships such as connections with co-workers or parents/children. This can be intra-organizational such as the youth ministry's connection to the worship committee. It is also inter-organizational such as our relationship with another church or Christian organization. Finally, it must include the relationship between our church and our neighborhood, our church and the local university, our church and the city, etc. We MUST steward our relationships.

2) We must steward our story(ies). Everyone has a story that is vitally important to identity and vocation. When we encounter someone new, a basic exchange of stories begins (Hi, may name is.... and I work.... and I am married...., etc.). Over time, these stories unfold into something far more complex and interesting. So too, our church has a story. It is these memories of the past that can give us imagination for the present and future. Thus, it is vitally important that the congregation and its leaders tell stories that form the core of the congregation's identity.

Stewardship is so much more than finances. It is about identity and vocation. Who am I and what am I to do? Who are we and what are we doing? Who am I connected to? What webs are we a part of? What new strands/connections do we want to make? These are all questions that the waters of Baptism ask us as well. Indeed, stewardship is about Baptism. In fact, to steward is to "remembe your baptism!" (the liturgical qoute).

The Church Is The Eucharist

2007-04-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

One of the first things that I see as we start at the beginning is Eucharist/communion/breaking bread/common table fellowship. This was at the heart of the community. It was a whole meal with a blessing of bread and cup in the middle of the dinner. It was a table of confession of belief and sin, a table of forgiveness and peace, a table of mutual participation in pain and hurt, and a table of survival (possibly the only meal anyone would have especially in the impoverished and highly persecuted areas).

Such a scenario does not work very well in most areas of western society, although it is still very much alive and viable in other areas of the world. However, what can we draw from this in our day to understand how gospel and church can change the world? How can we prepare a table in the midst of the world?

A Rebirth!

2007-02-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

I am rebirthing this blog. It was born out of conversations a year and half ago and never really made it. The reason is that we never really explored what a new kind of church would be like. With this post, I begin exploring a new kind of church. Let's face it, the church has looked very different in every age and, if we were willing to admit it, had a very different theology in each of these ages. The goal is not to find our ideal model in some other era but to recapitulate the radicalness and revolutionary ways in which gospel changed the world during these various times.

Missional Planning?

2005-08-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

Jason Evans started a new community in the San Diego area just this last year. When I asked his plans beforehand, Jason asked rhetorically, how much planning can I do if my focus is on embodying the kingdom rather than planting a church? What Jason understood is that the gospel is a response to a particular context and not a set of abstract 'truths'. read more

Emergent - History and Identity

2005-08-11T22:18:00.000-07:00

This short article is for people who may ask, “What’s Emergent?” It’s Ryan Bolger writing in Next-Wave. Ryan directs the Masters degree program in Global Leadership at Fuller Seminary. Next-Wave is run by Charlie Wear and has now reached 80 issues.

Game Over

2005-08-11T22:13:00.000-07:00

MSNBC carries this Reuters report about a bizarre death in an Internet cafe:

SEOUL, South Korea - A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet cafe, authorities said on Tuesday.

The 28-year-old man, identified only by his family name Lee, had been playing online battle simulation games at the cybercafe in the southeastern city of Taegu, police said.

Lee had planted himself in front of a computer monitor to play online games on Aug. 3. He only left the spot over the next three days to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed, they said.

Invisible Children

2005-08-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

Anyone else heard about Invisible Children? I just ordered a t-shirt and house party kit. Looks to be an amazing story.

McLaren on Hell

2005-08-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick summary of 10 ideas from Brian McLaren's book, "The Last Word and the Word After That."

For those of you who haven't read the book, here are some of the main ideas:
A. Our view of hell has a lot to say about our view of God (and vice versa).
B. For many people, hell means that God torments or tortures people consciously and forever, with no possibility of repentance and no possibility for an end to the tortures.
C. This view of God, I believe, is unworthy of the God presented to us in Jesus Christ.
D. The conventional understanding of hell developed over a long period of time. It wasn't revealed in the Old Testament, but arose in the period between Testaments. When Jesus speaks of it, he hasn't invented it, but rather is responding to it as a controversial idea among the Jewish people of his day.
E. The Sadducees were the conservatives who held to the older view that there was no hell or no afterlife. The Pharisees were, in a sense, the liberals who accepted the idea of hell. Many believe that the idea of hell came into Judaism from Persian religion - and that the name Pharisee may be from Farsi, or Persian.
F. Jesus does not follow either the Sadducees (who reject any idea of afterlife), nor does he follow the teaching of the Pharisees and their view of hell. Rather, he charts a bold new path and uses the language of hell ("owned" by the Pharisees) to draw attention to his own message - centered in the kingdom of God, and the character of God.
G. "The kingdom of God" does not mean heaven. Being excluded from the kingdom does not necessarily mean eternal conscious torment after death in hell either.
H. All people will face judgment. God is always both just and merciful in judgment. Being judged does not necessarily mean "being sent to hell." Nor does being condemned. These words mean being exposed for being disobedient to God, not pleasing God, not serving God.
I. Matthew speaks the most about hell, Mark and Luke, less, and John not at all. Paul speaks often of the reality of judgment, but he doesn't talk about hell. The New Testament is not as clear about the subject as many people believe.
K. We need to rethink the message of Jesus and the apostles in terms of the kingdom of God - which is God's will being done on earth, and not be so preoccupied with the issue of hell.

Blogosphere Doubling Every 5.5 Months!

2005-08-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

State of the Blogosphere:
- The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months
- A new blog is created about every second.
That is a lot of blogs!

"Off Limit" Topics

2005-05-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

Recently got an email that went something like this...

The church should not take part in discussions or activities that envolve specific subject matters such as ecology/environment, trade/commerce practices, outsourced goods manufacturing, global labor practices, and things of the like.

Wondering what thoughts you all have on this? You may know that I am rather passionate about some of these issues and view them as a part of my expression of faith. However, many of the issues are pretty confusing for a guy like me and I have more questions than answers.
Still, I love my vegan anti-sweatshop Blackspot shoes no matter what anyone says. :)
Thoughts?

Our Journey Group Begins--We Focused on Missional Practices

2005-05-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

Our group of four met over dinner last night. John, our elder who oversees our ministry of worship, Dave, our elder who guides our ministry of mission, John, the pastoral leader of our emerging/alternative community, and I ate Japanese food and reflected over Alan Roxburgh's little book, Starting Strong: 5 Keys to Discovering 21st Century Church. The book helped us carry further our learnings and conversation from the New Kind of Church ministry conference. We spent the bulk of our time around questions like:

1. Does "a new kind of church" mean old forms of church are obsolete?

2. What does it teach us when we learn that there are some Christians among us you are experimenting with whole new forms of congregational life? Can these new forms live in tension and partnership with older forms, and how might each community contribute to the wholeness of the others during this transitional period?

We recognized that is it through practices--not policy statements or even vision statements--that we cultivate a culture among us that is open to the newness of God. We explored the specific practices of openness and vulnerability, interest to learn from one another and enrich one another. And we talked about those specific persons who are embodying these practices that make it possible for us to live inside the messy, yet wondrously creative environment that is emerging among us. We also talked about the vocation of our leaders who can either hinder this new growth or help it.

It was a remarkable time to listen to one another, and to experience the richness that each person brings from their particular life experience and perspective on the gospel. Meeting in this way is one of the practices of faith that makes newness possible.

Faces of Jesus

2005-03-29T16:12:00.000-08:00

Christians have been making images of Jesus since lthe early centuries of the church. At the rejesus site you can look, think and chat with others about pictures of the face of Christ – some of them centuries old, some of them from today.

Article by Mclaren - Hotel Rwanda

2005-03-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

Brian Mclaren has a great article about the movie, Hotel Rwanda, where in it he says...

I can't think of a more worthwhile experience for Christian leaders than to watch Hotel Rwanda and then ask themselves questions like these:

Which film would Jesus most want us to see, and why?

Why did so many churches urge people to see Gibson's film, and why did so few (if any?) promote Terry George's film? What do our answers to that question say about us?

What were the practical outcomes of millions of people seeing Gibson's film? And what outcomes might occur if equal numbers saw Hotel Rwanda as an act of Christian faithfulness?

In what sense could Hotel Rwanda actually be entitled The Passion of the Christ?

What do we make of the fact that a high percentage of Rwandans who participated in the 1994 genocides were churchgoers?

What do we make of the fact that a high percentage of the Americans who ignored the 1994 genocides (then and now) were and are churchgoers?

What kind of repentance does each film evoke in Christians in the West? Why might the kind of repentance evoked by Hotel Rwanda be especially needed during these important days in history?

A Touch of Folly

2005-03-07T12:02:00.000-08:00

Since the day that Jesus first appeared on the scene, we have developed vast theological systems, organized worldwide churches, filled libraries with brilliant Christological scholarship, engaged in earthshaking controversies and embarked on crusades, reforms, and renewals. Yet there are still precious few of us with sufficient folly to make the mad exchange of everything for Christ; only a remnant with the confidence to risk everything on the gospel of grace; only a miniority who stagger about with the delirious joy of the man who found the buried treasure.
It was cynicism, pessimism, and despair that shadowed the ministry of Jesus and, as the old French proverb goes, - "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Pathos as Passion

2005-03-05T01:29:00.000-08:00

The following is quoted from Kenda Creasy Dean's book, Practicing Passion:
Ancient Hebrew society viewed pathos as a personal quality of divine love, embodied by the community of faith and not only by individuals. The Jews described Yahweh in very personal terms, using images such as friend and lover; the Hebrew word for love (ahav) means to be filled with desire and delight and passion for the one we love, to long for the presence of the beloved. OT scholar Walter Brueggemann claim that this caused Jews to prize Torah, the story of God's longing, over the more restrained wisdom literature, allowing biblical tradition to defy Western philosophical trends by consistently favoring "the impossibilities of passion" over the more disciplined perspective of reason. Education in ancient Israel, notes Brueggemann, was "education in passion"-- nurture into a distinct, passionate community that knew itself to be at odds with the distinct, passionate community that knew itself to be at odds with the dominant culture.... Education in passion led to particular practices in the public life of the people of Israel that directed community life toward the God of pathos.
I admire Tom for his passion that he is beginning to have about creating an alternative community. In his mind, he see's this alternative community as a people who value the Earth. What are some other values that this alternative community should have? Do we have a story that these values flow out of? Is it possible to live out the Jesus narrative? Can we "rescript" ourselves/our values?

To My Gaelic Friend

2005-02-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

Gurab amhlaidh duit
Cad é mar a tá tú?

Confused? Google it.

Contributors, can you please update you blogger profiles so we know who you are? Thanks!

"The Gates" Closes

2005-02-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

Simply amazing...

-The Art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude

The Gates
Central Park,New York
1979-2005

Why aren't we, as Christ church, creating more beauty? Why are we mostly known for what we are mad at, what we are against?

Links Updated

2005-02-27T20:45:00.000-08:00

Just remade the links. Have a good one you want to put up? Post it in the comments.

Sister Rose's Passion

2005-02-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

"Sister Rose's Passion" is a very small movie on a very big subject. I'll find out, shorty, if it wins the Academy Award for best short documentary it has been nominated for. The 38-minute documentary explores the story of Sister Rose Thering, a Dominican nun who has devoted her life to battling anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church. In addition to teaching and lecturing for over fifty years, her writings contributed to the drafting of "Nostra Aetate," the revolutionary document that changed the Church's position on Jews from negative to positive.

Once we acknowledge this whole history of discrimination against Protestants, Jews and Muslims then we can move forward together," she says. "But even then tolerance is not enough. We must not just tolerate but understand and eventually love people of other faiths. We are all children of god, striving to understand him in our own ways.

Missions and the Environment

2005-02-26T21:41:00.000-08:00

Confessions of a 'Reluctant Environmentalist'

We in the West, though undoubtedly concerned about the problems faced by people in the developing world, may actually be making their lives worse through our own excessive use of energy and our affluent lifestyles. Giving lip service to the idea of completing the missionary task, we're actually making it more difficult to accomplish.

A message shared from Ed Brown of the Au Sable Institute at Urbana
Read the article here

Prayer for Mark

2005-02-26T14:32:00.000-08:00

I met Mark Palmer at Jason Evan's former casa in So Cal almost 2 years ago. It was after that gathering, where Mark, Kevin, Jason, Erik, Charlie, Tawd and others prayed for us, that my wife and I got pregnant with Allison (we had been trying for a while). Mark is an amazing guy that has taught many of us about following Christ call into the unknown and how important the disciplines are. Join us in praying for his healing.

Information Overload?

2005-02-26T11:27:00.000-08:00

Watch the video that was shown on Thursday afternoon...

Flash Video or Text Version

I want to get my hands on some of that electronic paper.
What implications do you think technology, such as what is proposed here, means for us as ministers? Should our methods of information delivery shift to one that people enjoy to use?
Most of my students (I'm a youth pastor) that have web access have blogs. Some adults in our church are into it too. If you read many pomo blogs, you probably know that there are a bunch of "emergent" type churches that have used blogs for their main church page (cheap/free, easy and content is easily updated and has real sense of community). Makes me wonder why we spend so much money and time making pretty sites that rarely get used by our congregations.

Welcome to the Conversation

2005-02-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

If you would like to contribute your thoughts, please post a comment with your email and we will send you an invitation that will allow you to join our blog.
-Tom